vows

The pull between the glamour and the beauty

The facade and the source

What are you devoted to?

Where are your roots and your truth?

Caught between fantasy and desire

The fast burning flame and the heat

Who do you answer to?

Where is your allegiance?

You can take in the whole world

And you could touch the centre

You can be a blessing

You are not your own.

Paper Cuts

What happens now

If I won't let you bully me

What is the cost

And how do I know

Who will pay

And where are you drawing the currency from?

Whose future is draining into the

bottomless pit

Of your wound

Your weapons

Your weary capitulation 

Where is possible to find

A stance on solid ground 

Outside the grooves and currents

Of your history

And mine

A standing place

Of something better than before

The sanctuary you dreamed 

Little and alone 

And always out of reach

karma

fated force majeure
but no medicine, or food,

for the hungry ghosts.

Momentary

Sometimes it's a poem, a tiny blossom or the feel of the wind on skin,
that lands gently and turns the key:
is this what beauty is for?

It makes me one mind, or two,

and both ways I fall into something bigger than me,

that feels like home but also like the first, quick mile on the open road.

Sometimes it's a mood, or the scent of a place I'm likely never to go,

that unsettles me, suddenly, and restlessness blooms,

an invitation and an inner shadow.

I forget peace, or hope,

and everything is a sharp intrusion, a sinister straight jacket,

like handcuffs pulling tighter in the struggle.

I'm no longer breathing with ease-

a cat up a tree,

a dazed bird,

a fish in a talon; gasping.

Can love ever- truly- run out?

Has it ever not been there,

pulse of moon light, spark of heart beat- folding over the seasons year after year.

As ever, when I stop to look, there is something

to see and feel

and

worship or mourn- a full cup, this life.

A full cup. 

that small, great round

Currents of time move,
molecules of memory 
moments crystallised,

questions and answers

moving over a lifetime,

mystery and faith,

turning on the wheel,

moon-and-sun clock and star time,

spiralling our lives,

patterning, like rain,

like the oceans- like valleys,

being born through death.

re membering

Maybe I wasn't shorn, and sent out, vulnerable and exposed

Maybe,  maybe, there was another silent gift, chosen by you, for me. Maybe you saw me. Saw something of me and let me have it. Despite the pain.

And unfortunately, without language.

And maybe you had found it for yourself and found a way to share it with me.

communion

Green breathed into my heart

Home again, and for the first time.

The mystery, made flesh

Logos the bread

And the fruit of the vine

Soul to soul.